Tag: rain

553: Satisfied Hunger (Ava Nathaniel Winter)

                “more alive / for having satisfied a hunger.” -Ava Nathaniel Winter, Transgenesis, pg. 7

                I often think about hunger as a destructive thing, a selfish thing. I have been taught to think that way. And, I realize, to hunger that way. Hungry to consume, to take, to take away from another. Ava Nathaniel Winter reminds me: aren’t there other hungers?
                And there are. So many. I’m grateful for the reminder. For instance: today as I walked with my friend we were hungry for the conversation, for sharing it, for walking together. We were hungry for intricate patterns of hands and knees and hips and swinging arms and glances, and hungry too for the rain that scattered over us. Rain that might (I think now, reading Winter) be generous in its loving hunger for grass, for ground, for trees and creatures walking through its laughter. 
                For instance: my partner is traveling, and I am hungry for the quiet of sharing space, for the stretch in an early spring evening when the sun has gone down and the rain has picked up and we are sitting for a long time before we look over and see each other. Share that: that loving glance. I’m hungry for it, and more alive for having satisfied the hunger.
                For instance: I am so often hungry to hear my friends’ voices.
                For instance: my partner and I first read this poem out loud, together, lounged on the same floor where we often lay side by side listening to the rain. We were hungry for the poems we read: for Ava Nathaniel Winter’s words, Ai Qing’s images, Fatima Asghar’s rhythms, and so many more. Poetry for me is sometimes a hungry thing: words hungry for sound, sounds hungry for sharing. Blooming, weaving hungers, tasting growing hungers, growing like grass does, and more alive for its embraces and satisfactions. 

by Azlan

527: “Rain opens us” (Joy Harjo)

“Rain opens us, like flowers, or earth that has been thirsty for more than a season.
We stop all of our talking, quit thinking, or blowing sax to drink the mystery.
We listen to the breathing beneath our breathing.
This is how the rain became rain, how we became human.”
                -Joy Harjo, from “It’s Raining in Honolulu,” which I first saw quoted in Daniel Heath Justice’s Why Indigenous Literatures Matter

                My friends, I was writing a different Uproar post—perhaps for next week–when the wind shifted in the window and then it was raining. Clouds’ fingers dancing on the deck. Then I was outside, too, surprised and opened by how thick the water fell. Then I was crouching beneath a little tree in my backyard, making sure the rain barrel was closed, water stitching down around us, earth into sky, now into before into after. Life into life.
                Rain opens us, like flowers.
                There’s been a drought here. The plants lying down, one kind after another, beneath the dry heat. Until I see wilted ground cover like ragged carpet over hard dirt. Now I’m back inside, skin still slicked, long enough to write down that I think the plant stems will lift back up with this. Like I feel myself lifting.
                We listen to the breathing beneath our breathing.
                Long enough, and no longer. And back outside to feel the water soaking down, lavish, luscious, alive.
                This is how the rain became rain, how we became human.

by Azlan